Personal Insights on Meditation and Mindfulness.

Menu

How Being Off Centered Can Be Centering

When I first started working on this whole centering thing I thought I had to stay dead center. That absolute center where everything around me is equidistant in all directions at all times. Well, wasn’t I just wrong. That only led to tons of aggravation, confusion and more than a few bumps and bruises.

Being a detail oriented person seems to be part of my problem. I got lost in the teeny tiny details of being centered in everything at every moment. Not realizing that sometimes, being off center is being centered; in a macro sense.

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

What I mean is that staying centered is all about give and take. If you try to stay centered in all things at all times, there is no give and take, no true balance. Sometimes you need to focus on one thing more than another. Later that focus will shift to something else. As this process continues, I am finding that the time spent focusing on the different small parts gets less and less, and the amount of effort needed to balance things out over all diminishes. The longer term result is that I get to achieve balance in more areas of my life. Sometimes I need to take a little side journey first; to balance out a small part of life so that I can find better balance overall.

Image courtesy of suphakit73 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Sometimes I think it is the universe’s way of messing with me. And yes, I do can take it personally. I set a goal, I work hard to get there and fail. Then I take a breather, step back, work on something else, and before I know it, I end up where I wanted to go in the first place. So why couldn’t I get there the first time? Why isn’t the shortest distance between two points a straight line? Usually the reason is I just wasn’t ready to be in that place until this moment.

Someone who is struggling with this told me with absolute conviction they knew they were growing. I thought back to when I had those thoughts of “knowing” something. I gave the same advice I had gotten; “if you ‘know’ you have grown, you probably haven’t.” Unfortunately, it didn’t even make a dent in the person’s perception. That got me wondering why not. It worked for me. As I thought about it, I started looking more deeply at where this person is, where I was when I got the advice and realized this person isn’t ready yet. They need to take one of those side trips. Their life is out of balance at a macro and micro level, and their desire to be completely centered when they really aren’t is a control issue They want to feel in control; to feel progress, or else. And that desire for control is what keeps them out of balance. By staying off balance in little areas and not taking time to find balance in the everyday things, there is never a chance to build momentum towards overall balance. They are treading the same steps over and over again without making any progress.

So let the idea of being centered at all times go. Center the little things and start small. If something needs more time now, give it; it will all work out in the end. Goals are good, but attaching more importance to the goal than the journey is a slippery slope.